MTN Uganda has today announced a partnership with Mastercard and United Bank for Africa (UBA) aimed at enabling its mobile money users to make payments online.
The service - dubbed MTN MoMocard - will allow one to create a virtual card using USSD. Then, they will be able to use that card to make online payments to all platforms that accept MasterCard. The virtual card will act the way a debit card is.
"Through this partnership, MTN MoMo customers will use a virtual card to shop or make payments at the vast network of global outlets accepting Mastercard payments," wrote MTN in a press release.
To access the service, one will part with UGX. 1,000 ($0.26) as a flat fee for a window of 14 days. Then, they're assigned a 16-digit virtual card number together with the CVV (security code) number sent via an SMS notification.
Implying that one will have to request for a different card number and CVV every 14 days. As long as they are interested in transacting online using the service.
This is hectic but we're a USSD market (for now) thus, many would be willing to overlook that part.
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Apart from the $0.26, the users will also pay a fee equal to 3% of each transaction amount, for every transaction. This is competitive, compared to the alternatives. VISA, for example, charges an average of 2.00% - plus $0.10 - per transaction.
Like Tidal and other recent products that MTN has launched, this is aimed at the younger population that might not have got ahold of a card yet. Implying that one won't ever need to walk to a bank to request for one.